Injected Image Exchange

A video still on a news page has been swapped with someone's private holiday photos.

"No matter the source, all I need is to get my data. Right. Now." -someone, once

Routers are our gate to the internet. Once we see the name of a network on our phone or computer, click it, wait a little, see that small check symbol and that ever-so-calming curvy signal lines in the menu bar - we feel good. That's how I sometimes feel anyway.

What we request to see in our browsers, the router will pass our wishes on and, once received, return information to our device and us. We usually take that for granted.

Injected Image Exchange is a router that advertises its service, not requiring any form of authentication. Once more than one person connect to it and browse the web, it alters the information they receive.
Any image appearing on any website one person visits, will be swapped with images from the websites other people connected to the same router are visiting at the moment.

For example, while connected to the router, Anna's news article is suddenly topped with an image of Bob's best friend on the beach - while Bob's best friend on social media seems to have posted a, for him, oddly topical photo of the war in Syria, captioned "That beach lyf tho".

LEFT: Odd caption of a clearly altered image on Instagram.RIGHT: An image of Karl Lagerfeld is injected as an album cover on Spotify.